(I am writing this post under a pseudonym because I don’t want potential future non-EA employers to find this with a quick google search. Initially my name could be found on the CV linked in the text, but after this post was shared much more widely than I had expected, I got cold feet and removed it.)
In the past 12 months, I applied for 20 positions in the EA community. I didn’t get any offer. At the end of this post, I list all those positions, and how much time I spent in the application process. Before that, I write about why I think more posts like this could be useful.
Please note: The positions were all related to long-termism, EA movement building, or meta-activities (e.g. grant-making). To stress this again, I did not apply for any positions in e.g. global health or animal welfare, so what I’m going to say might not apply to these fields.
Costs of applications
Applying has considerable time-costs. Below, I estimate that I spent 7-8 weeks of full-time work in application processes alone. I guess it would be roughly twice as much if I factored in things like searching for positions, deciding which positions to apply for, or researching visa issues. (Edit: Some organisations reimburse for time spent in work tests/trials. I got paid in 4 of the 20 application processes. I might have gotten paid in more processes if I had advanced further).
At least for me, handling multiple rejections was mentally challenging. Additionally, the process may foster resentment towards the EA community. I am aware the following statement is super in-accurate and no one is literally saying that, but sometimes this is the message I felt I was getting from the EA community:
“Hey you! You know, all these ideas that you had about making the world a better place, like working for Doctors without Borders? They probably aren’t that great. The long-term future is what matters. And that is not funding constrained, so earning to give is kind of off the table as well. But the good news is, we really, really need people working on these things. We are so talent constraint… (20 applications later) … Yeah, when we said that we need people, we meant capable people. Not you. You suck.”
Why I think more posts like this would have been useful for me
Overall, I think it would have helped me to know just how competitive jobs in the EA community (long-termism, movement building, meta-stuff) are. I think I would have been more careful in selecting the positions I applied for and I would probably have started exploring other ways to have an impactful career earlier. Or maybe I would have applied to the same positions, but with less expectations and less of a feeling of being a total loser that will never contribute anything towards making the world a better place after being rejected once again 😊
Of course, I am just one example, and others will have different experiences. For example, I could imagine that it is easier to get hired by an EA organisation if you have work experience outside of research and hospitals (although many of the positions I applied for were in research or research-related).
However, I don’t think I am a very special case. I know several people who fulfil all of the following criteria:
- They studied/are studying at postgraduate level at a highly competitive university (like Oxford) or in a highly competitive subject (like medical school)
- They are within the top 5% of their course
- They have impressive extracurricular activities (like leading a local EA chapter, having organised successful big events, peer-reviewed publications while studying, …)
- They are very motivated and EA aligned
- They applied for at least 5 positions in the EA community and got rejected in 100% of the cases.
I think I also fulfil all these criteria. Here is my CV roughly at the time when I was doing the applications. It sports such features as ranking 16th out of around 6000 German medical students, and 8 peer-reviewed publications while studying.
Without further ado, here are all the ...
Positions I got rejected from in the last 12 months
I also include the stage that I was rejected at and how much time I had invested in the application process (Mostly work tests, but also researching organisations, adapting personal statements, preparing for interviews. I am counting “lost productivity” here, so I am also counting travel time weighted at around 50%).
Position – how far I got– how much time I invested in the application
Chief of Staff at Will MacAskill’s Office – stage 2/2: didn’t get an offer after 2 days worktrial – 32 h
OpenPhil Research Analyst – stage 2/4 (?): rejected after conversation notes work test – 22 h
OpenPhil biosecurity early career researcher grant – stage 1/1: no grant – 40 h
EA grants evaluator (CEA) – stage 2/X: rejected after first interview – 7 h
FHI Research scholar programme – stage 2/3: rejected after second work test – 50 h
Effective giving uk researcher – Stage 3/3 (?): no offer after what I think was the final interview – 15 h
LEAN manager – Stage 2/?: rejected after work test – 6 h
CEA operations specialist – stage 3/?: rejected after interview – 9 h
CEA local group specialist – stage 2/?: rejected after work-test – 12 h
2x FHI academic project manager (GovAI and research scholar programme) – Stage 2/2: no offer after final interview – 10 h each
Toby Ord research assistant – Stage 2/?: rejected after work test - 12 h
Center for Health Security research analyst – initiative application and interview, but they decided not to hire at all – 10 h
Nuclear Threat initiative researcher – initiative application, never heard back – 1 h
CSER biosecurity postdoc – stage 1/? – 3 h
CSER academic project manager – stage 1/? – 2 h
GPI Head of Research Operations – Stage 4/4: No offer after in-person work trial – 32 h
And here are additional positions I applied for but then did not complete the application process:
COO Ought – stopped following up after first stage because of visa issues – 4 h (but much more if you count me researching said visa issues)
Researcher Veddis – I decided not to go on the final stage work trial – 6 h
Program Manager/Investigator at BERI– I decided not to do the final stage work test – 15 h
The problem (for people like me, and may those who enjoy it keep doing so), as I see it: this is an elite community. Which is to say, this is a community primarily shaped by people who are and have always been extremely ambitious, who tend to have very strong pedigrees, and who are socialized with the norms of the global upper/top professional class.
"Hey you could go work for Google as a machine learning specialist" sounds to a person like me sort of like "Hey you could go be an astronaut." Sure, I guess it's possible. "Hey you could work for a nice nonprofit with all these people who share your weird values about charity, and join their social graph!" sounds doable. Which makes it a lot more damaging to fail.
People like me who are standardized-test-top-tier smart but whose backgrounds are pretty ordinary (I am inspired to post this in part because I had a conversation with someone else with the exact same experience, and realized this may be a pattern) don't tend to understand that they've traveled into a space of norms that is highly different than we're used to, when we join the EA social community. It just feels like "Oh! Great! I've found my community of smart people who actually care about getting to work improving the world! Let's roll up our sleeves together."
Unfortunately, this can be a costly mistake. As soon as you start making moves that would feel natural in other contexts, like parlaying steady contract work into a regular job, you are likely to run into a very unpleasant brick wall.
Some examples of differences between elite culture and non-elite culture:
1. In elite culture, you're expected to be very positive in professional settings. You're expected to say "exciting" a lot, to call things "awesome," and to thank people creatively and effusively. In non-elite culture, there is no such expectation, and displays of extreme enthusiasm about work don't go over that well. Even at full enthusiasm-as-lived-experience you're unlikely to display it in the same way as someone well-versed in elite culture norms. This may get you called a downer.
2. In elite culture, there's a lot of flexibility, and people often have "runway" when hunting for jobs. So, for example, if someone asks you to take a two week trial period from elite culture, it may not even occur to them that this will require you to quit your job. They may then even admonish you for having quit, should they reject you.
3. In elite culture, lots of people talk about their productivity habits socially. There is a lot of social media posting about productivity techniques, self-help books, etc. Sometimes this can create a cargo cult effect where people feel like that's what they're missing, and they parrot the style and pursue lots of productivity boondoggles. I don't think this tends to work.
Trying to break class barriers is very risky and often excruciating. It also tends to make you feel crazy, since you can feel bias creeping in against you, but you never know for sure if it's not just perfect meritocracy correctly filtering someone weak like you away from Mount Olympus.
On the plus side, you can get used to it, stop trying to break in, and basically enjoy a position as a highly useful and well-supported element of the professional EA fringe. But at least for me it cost me a year and a half of severe depression. I wouldn't wish that on anyone else.